The regulation of human cloning continues to be a significant national and international policy issue. Despite years of intense academic and public debate, there is little clarity as to the philosophical foundations for many of the emerging policy choices. The notion of "human dignity" is commonly used to justify cloning laws...........

But that process is inefficient. In many animals, only one in 100 cloned embryos ever leads to a live birth. Some embryos expire in the IVF dish. Others wither in the womb. Of those that are born, a few suffer from abnormalities and quickly die.

Unlike normal animal reproduction, cloning does not need sperm to fertilize an egg. Instead, DNA is taken from a "somatic" cell – like a skin cell – from the original animal. That genetic material is then transferred into an empty egg cell with its own DNA removed.

Human cloning often refers to human reproductive cloning to produce a genetic copy of an existing person. Despite decades of speculation, there has been no human reproductive cloning. Research cloning, also known as embryo cloning or therapeutic cloning, is another form of human cloning that produces genetically specific embryonic stem cells. After a series of failures and high-profile false claims of success, the first report of stem cells created from cloned human embryos was published in 2013.

Over the past 15 years or so, genetics research has gotten so advanced that, from a scientific perspective, we’re actually pretty darn close to being able to create human clones. The technology for successful human cloning is within our reach. But the legal, ethical, and social implications keep us from using it.

(STAT) – Sometimes what doesn’t happen is as interesting as what does. Cloning human embryos has been possible for nearly seven years. Yet as far as I know, during that time no one has made a cloned baby or, apparently, … Read More

At the same time, in the first years after the Dolly announcement, various people and groups said that they were going to clone a human. One of the first was the aptly named Richard Seed, a physicist who, in spite of his well-covered announcements, seemed to have done nothing. Cloning created human embryos seven years ago. Cloned monkey embryos have yielded cloned infant monkeys. Why hasn't anyone made cloned human babies?